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Giay outlines vision for the Foundation

By Tiffany Woods

The Rotary Foundation, which awards grants for humanitarian and educational purposes, needs to be proactive, flexible, visionary, and trustworthy, said its incoming chair, Luis Giay.

Giay mentioned these characteristics in a speech about the future of the Foundation during Rotary's International Assembly, a training conference for incoming district governors taking place in San Diego, California, USA.

With respect to its short-term future, Giay said the goals for the Foundation in Rotary year 2006–07 are to:

• Focus on eradicating polio

• Raise the Foundation's profile as an advocate of peace and conflict resolution through partnerships with institutions

• Encourage Rotarians to donate an average of US$100 each to the Annual Programs Fund and also set a record for major gifts to the Permanent Fund, or endowment fund

• Work with Rotary International to enhance Rotary's public image

• Improve grassroots training to increase Rotarians' awareness of the Foundation's mission

• Streamline management of the Foundation's educational and humanitarian programs

• Implement a plan for the future

To help with the latter, the trustees created the Future Vision Committee.

The committee has consulted experts and surveyed more than 20,000 Rotarians. It is working on a Future Vision Plan for the short, medium, and long term. It will go into effect gradually as of 1 July 2006 and should be fully operational by 30 June 2007. Giay said the committee wants the Foundation to:

• Take proactive rather than reactive steps to solve problems

• Serve Rotarians "without piling more work, more paper, more bureaucracy on them"

• Involve Rotarians more in the administration of projects at the district level

• Have the Permanent Fund able to invest more than US$400 million in programs annually by 2015 — almost the equivalent to a PolioPlus program every two years

• Exercise careful stewardship of its funds

• Become a charity of choice for the majority of Rotarians

• Take on new corporate projects and secure financial partners to carry out projects

In addition to outlining the Future Vision Committee's objectives, Giay also described his personal, long-term vision for the Foundation. He said the Foundation should:

• Consolidate programs into four major areas: health, education, environment, and world peace

• Not create more programs, but concentrate instead on supporting and funding Rotarians' service
  activities

• Play a more important role in preserving peace

• Create "mega-programs," in which "everyone can participate and millions can receive benefits"

• Phase out undesignated contributions and have the Permanent Fund support all the Foundation's annual programs

• Make the Humanitarian Grants Program the "superstar." He said that by 2010 such programs should represent close to 90 percent of the overall program budget. The other 10 percent would be educational programs, he said. The Humanitarian Grants Program includes Matching Grants; Health, Hunger, and Humanity (3-H) Grants, and the corporate program, which is currently polio eradication. Presently, humanitarian programs make up 75 percent of the program budget, he said. Under his idea, the amount of money given to educational programs wouldn't shrink; instead the money for humanitarian programs would increase.

• Increase the Foundation's funds by at least 10 percent a year. "In 2007, we will need $150 million and by 2010, $200 million — and these are annual figures," he said.

After Giay finished his speech, Rotarian and RI training leader Allan Jagger took the podium. Jagger said 70 percent of Rotarians do not contribute to the Foundation. He pointed out that Rotarians, not the trustees of the Foundation, decide what types of projects to spend the money on.

"I will let you in on a secret," Jagger said. "There is sufficient money in Rotary to fund every program that the imagination of Rotarians can come up with. The problem is, it's still in the pockets of Rotarians."

Jagger noted that during the next decade or two, a huge transfer of wealth will take place in the developed world as an older generation dies. He urged Rotarians to leave a legacy to the Permanent Fund, a fund in which the corpus is never spent and only the interest is used for Foundation programs.

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